To complete a call requested by an originating agent, a switch must interact with the originating agent in order to collect the information needed to setup and route the call to a terminating agent. Furthermore, the switch must be supplied (or “provisioned”) with information on how to conduct the interaction with the originating agent. Resource provisioning provides the switch with the information necessary for interaction with the originating agent. For example, an interaction protocol for a trunk group to which the originating agent belongs would be part of the resource provisioning provided to the switching device. Interaction provisioning defines the “dialing plan”, i.e., the interaction between the switch and the originating agent that must occur in order for the switch to collect the information needed to setup and route the call. Subscriber provisioning defines the types of subscriber numbers which the switch acquires from the originating agent for use in authorizing subscribers and subscriber-based features. Finally, translations provisioning provides the switch with the information necessary for interaction with the terminating agent. These various provisionings of the switch may be collectively viewed as an interaction framework which controls interactions between the switching and the originating and/or terminating agents.
In certain prior configurations, switches were provisioned by physically hardcoding the interaction framework into the switch itself. Accordingly, the interaction framework for such switches have always been considered relatively inflexible in that, once in place, a modification to the interaction framework required the service provider, typically, the owner of the switch, to retain the services of the manufacturer to recode the switch. As a result, modifying the interaction framework of a switch often cost many thousands of dollars and required months, and sometimes even years, to complete.
In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to increase flexibility in modifying the interaction framework for a switch. As a result, switch configurations, for example, the most recent commercially available versions of the DMS-250 switch manufactured by Nortel Networks Corporation of Montreal, Canada, include certain capabilities that enable access providers to readily modify (or “reprovision”) the interaction framework of the switch. To do so, a call processing (or “CALLP”) application of the switch was configured for interactions with originating and/or terminating agents in accordance with a flexible interaction framework defined in software. More specifically, stored in a memory subsystem of the switch is the resource, interaction, subscriber and translations provisioning information needed for the CALLP application to interact with the originating and/or terminating agents. The provisioning information was stored in the memory subsystem as a collection of tables, each of which maintained, in the form of executable script, a respective type of selectable provisioning information. A user interface enabled a system administrator to reprovision the CALLP application of the switch by selecting desired executable scripts from the collection of tables and incorporating the selected scripts into the flexible interaction framework. Later, when the switch handles a call, the flexible interaction framework incorporating the newly selected scripts would be used to define how the CALLP application handles interactions with the originating and/or terminating agents during the setup and routing of a call therebetween.
While the use of a flexible interaction framework within a switch greatly enhanced the ability of the system administrator to selectively reprovision that switch, reprovisioning has remained a difficult task because of the syntactical complexity of the scripts maintained in the memory subsystem as a collection of tables. For example, resource provisioning of a switch appears to be a simple task in that it merely requires the selection of appropriate scripts from TRKGRP, TRKSIG, TRKFEAT, FLEXDIAL and MSGCTR tables. However, the difficulty of this task can be readily appreciated by merely reviewing a typical example of resource provisioning for a switch:
TRKGRPACC670TWMFWKGRPTYP: AXXESSTRAFSNO: 9PADGRP: NDPGPNCCLS: NCITSELSEQ: MIDLSIGIDX: MF_WK_IDXFEATIDX: AXX670_IDXDPIDX:I_OLI_ANI_CVITC_AU_SD_ADOGRPTYPE: EANTTRKFEATAXX670ORIGOPTS:(ALTTRTMT) (OHQ) (REORIGAL $) (SNPA214) (SNXX 684) (TIMEBI8AS −2) TRKCOS6) (MSGCTR 670)$TERMOPTS:(NOANSDUR 10 TRMT RODR)(OHQTERM) SNPA 703) (TRKCOS 6)$MSGCTR670ADDRESS: (ADDR PRTNM EAN) (OLI PRTNM EAPT)(ADDR OPER NORMAL OFRT 1 EAN OFRT2)$TRKSIGMF_WK_IDXSIGTYPE: DS1IPULSETYP: MFISTARTSG: WKPSEIZTMR: 5PDILTMR: 5MINRTMR: 2FDIGMASK: KPLDIGMASK: ST STP ST2P ST3PDIALMODE: MOSTARTSG: WKOPULSETYP: MFOIDGTMR: 6TRKGRDTM: 70OPTIONS:(ANSWFLTR 16) (DELIVER CGNONLY)(ACKWINK) (MLTSTAGE) (ODSCFLTR 16)(ORIGFLTR 7) (REMBSY) (TDSCFLTR 16)$
From the foregoing example of resource provisioning, it should be readily appreciated that a technician must have a high level of expertise in order to be able to reprovision or otherwise maintain existing switches. However, as the demand for voice, data and other telecommunication services continues to grow, it has become increasingly difficult for service providers to find sufficient numbers of technicians with the requisite expertise needed to reprovision the constantly growing number of switches. It is, therefore, the object of this invention to provide a switch with a highly simplified human interface that enables lesser skilled technicians to reprovision and/or otherwise maintain the switch.